2/20/2017

let the record show ...

it's always been a mouthpiece for the israeli government and has frequently allowed conflicts of interest in their coverage - you or your child can serve in the israeli army and you can still cover israel for the paper, for example.

the paper's long hated the palestinian people.

they went after vanessa redgrave with lies when she won the oscar.

those lies made it onto 'saturday night live' which rushed to earn brownie points.

vanessa's crime was refusing to pretend that the paletinian people deserved to die, refusing to go along with the media circus insisting palestinian lives did not matter.

That the New York Times demonstrates a systematic editorial
bias in favor of Israeli state power and against Palestinian rights is
old news. Whether it is reporting on the Boycott, Divest and Sanction
(BDS) movement, the deadly Gaza flotilla raid, cease fire violations
between the IDF and Hamas, or any other aspect of the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians, the New York Times reliably acts as a
mouthpiece for propagating Israeli hasbara (propaganda). Aside from its
“objective” reporting, this editorial bias also manifests itself in the
narratives that make their way into the Opinion section. On Feb. 14,
the paper allowed a spokesperson for the illegal settlers in the
occupied territories to openly advocate violations of the Fourth Geneva
Convention and the establishment an apartheid state in Mandatory
Palestine.

let the record show that 'the new york times' has never stopped attacking palestinians.

Mattis visit comes days after meeting with Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani.

Of that meet-up, the US Defense Dept noted:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18, 2017 —
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met with
Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani in Munich
yesterday, a Defense Department spokesperson said in a statement.The two men affirmed their commitment
to their partnership to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the
statement said, and they discussed the latest developments in the Mosul operation and the key role Peshmerga forces have played in the counter-ISIS fight. Mattis and Barzani both noted the
important military cooperation between the government of Iraq and the
KRG, the statement said. They agreed battlefield success over the past
year was made possible by strong cooperation between the government of
Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the United States.

Donald Trump has not said he would seize Iraq's oil.

But the press loves to act as though he did.

It's actually great when they repeat it.

They remind the world that wars are about resources.

Even better would be if they'd explain how Iraq's oil has been seized by the IMF and the World Bank.

But that would require actual reporting.

Fortunately, Iraqis who listen to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are
aware of what took place, even if the western media blacks it out.

While Mattis is in Baghdad, US Vice President Mike Pence recently met with Iraq's prime minister Hayder al-Abadi.

Hayder really is that short. (Pence is five feet and eleven inches tall.)

It's said his small stature helped him escape Iraq in the 80s as he
posed as a tiny peasant woman, gathering himself up in a large shawl.
He'd remain out of Iraq for decades, returning only in April of 2003 --
like so many other cowards -- once the foreign forces sent Saddam
Hussein out of his Baghdad home.

When not clothed as a woman, Hayder supported armed insurrection in Iraq
though, as far as anyone knows, he was not plotting against the US or
killing US troops the way former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki
had done while he was out of Iraq.

In 2014, FRONTLINE (PBS) briefly noted:Maliki climbed the ranks quickly, rising to lead the Dawa branch in
Damascus, an assignment that has fueled questions about what role -- if
any -- he played in several high-profile attacks carried out by the
group. In 1981, for example, Dawa operatives launched a suicide attack
that killed 61 people at the Iraqi embassy in Beirut. Two years later,
they struck the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait.

That's the Dawa political party -- which Hayder belongs to as does Nouri
al-Maliki. And which the US government has embraced repeatedly
throughout the administrations of Bully Boy Bush and Barack Obama.

Is it any wonder that today is day 126 of The Mosul Slog?

Back in June of 2014, the Islamic State seized the city of Mosul.

Only last October did Hayder al-Abadi launch an operation to liberate or 'liberate' the city.

The 'success' has been the semi-liberation of east Mosul -- only semi due to the renewed violence there in the last 14 days.

Now useless tag alongs (embedded with the Iraqi military) try to sell the operation as dynamic.

They're idiots.

As Shelly Culbertson and Linda Robinson (RAND) noted earlier this month: The liberation of Mosul will not be complete with the military
operations that oust ISIS. Failing to get the civilian response right
risks a short-term pyrrhic victory and widening civil war in Iraq.
This should concern the U.S., as instability in Iraq threatens U.S.
foreign policy interests in the Middle East and violence that continues
to create large numbers of refugees. Steps are required to manage the needs of displaced civilians and get
them back home. Since the start of the conflict with ISIS, a peak of 3.4 million
Iraqi civilians were displaced by violence, and 3 million remain
displaced today. An additional half million people may be displaced
during the fight to take back remaining parts of Mosul.
On our recent trips to Erbil and Baghdad, where the military and
humanitarian responses to Mosul are being managed, we spoke with
numerous stakeholders and identified key challenges that will need to be
resolved to stabilize Mosul and get its civilians back home.
The government of Iraq is sending displaced persons from Mosul into
camps instead of allowing them to move to other urban areas due to
concerns that there might be ISIS collaborators among the displaced.

The civilians' identification documents are taken from them for as long
as they stay in the camp. They are permitted to return to their homes
when it is considered safe, but widespread destruction of public,
residential, commercial and agricultural infrastructure means that it
may be years before they can go home. While security concerns are understandable, a solution must be found
that respects international norms against holding displaced civilians in
detention.
We visited two emergency camps a short distance from Mosul. Khazer is a
tent city of over 32,000 people, next to Hassan Sham with a similar
number. Despite the valiant efforts of aid workers to supply basic
needs, these emergency camps are not equipped to house Iraqis for more
than a few months.

In addition to the flimsy tents without electricity, only outdoor pumps
for water, no 24-hour health care services, and no spaces where people
could prepare hot food, community activities and psychosocial treatment
is lacking for these traumatized people who fear for their futures.

Important issues.

And ones regularly missing in the western press coverage.

But the embedded 'reporters' are too busy bedding down with Iraqi forces to think about the Iraqi people.